Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 90540 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 453(@200wpm)___ 362(@250wpm)___ 302(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90540 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 453(@200wpm)___ 362(@250wpm)___ 302(@300wpm)
Al chuckled. “Prosto rai means . . . sheer heaven.”
CHAPTER 13
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“Should I stay or should I go now?!” Karin and I belted out the song along with the stereo. Top down in our new convertible. The Clash playing. Hair blowing. Sun shining. Singing at the top of our lungs.
“So you gotta let me know . . . SHOULD I COOL IT OR SHOULD I BLOW?!”
I was happy, truly happy, for the first time in forever. We’d just cruised the Red Rock Canyon loop, the Porsche dazzling against the sandstone and red washes.
When Karin and I had driven it by the folks’, everyone had looked at me with new respect. The car wasn’t a seven-figure score, but I had another date with a billionaire, another iron in the fire.
When the song wound down, Karin turned off the stereo. “Now that we’re alone, you want to tell me what he did in the club? Must’ve been pretty bad for him to send you this ride as an olive branch.”
I’d known this question was coming. “It’s one for the sister vault, okay? He . . . he got me off. In front of other people.”
She blinked at me. “And then?”
“And then? That’s not enough? I wasn’t prepared for it!”
Karin looked confused. “Was it good with him?”
“That was part of what freaked me out so bad. I got off harder than I ever have. Harder than I knew was possible.” So help me, if a crazy Russian was my key . . .
Karin waved that away. “So you have a fetish. It’s perfectly normal.”
I did a double take. “I don’t have a fetish. Are you high?”
“You’re an exhibitionist. You always have been, you know.”
“What are you talking about?”
“When you were little, I’d dress you up really cute to use as my shill, and the second I turned around, you’d be stripping. I was lucky if I could keep you in a diaper.” She chuckled. “You’ve never noticed all of your baby pics are of you running around parties naked?”
“Yeah, but by all accounts I was a hard-partying, rule-breaking kid. And what does that have to do with me as an adult?”
“Not the same thing, of course, but you’ve always been a little nudie.”
“This isn’t funny.”
“Vice, for God’s sake, I do badger games. Talk about exhibitionism. Benji watches me do stripteases and dance around in lingerie. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t get us worked up.”
“So you know about his crush?”
She nodded. “He thinks it’ll be weird.”
“Weirder than a congressman acting like his wife died in a fiery car crash so he can get a piece of ass?” When I downshifted for a stop sign, the engine purred. Giving up this car would’ve been impossible for anything or anyone outside of my pack.
“Benji also thinks I’m still in love with you-know-who.”
“Are you?” I asked, though I knew the answer. Karin was lost for Walker.
She gazed away. “That would be idiotic, wouldn’t it? He made his feelings clear.”
The man had a ready-made family but was too stupid to see it. And if Karin and Benji ever did get together, it’d be too late for the asshole. “Are you holding back with Benji because of his history?”
He’d been sexually abused out on the streets. When I was young and didn’t know better, I had asked him distressing questions like, “Why are you scared to go outside at night?” and “Why do you cry when it’s bath time?” I often wished I could go back and spare him that extra pain.
“He’s worked through a lot of it,” Karin said. “But, yeah, getting with his adoptive sister might spin some things off axis.”
He’d always called me sis, but never Karin. I don’t think he’d ever bonded with her that way.
She frowned at me. “Enough about that. There’s more you’re not telling me.”
I could never fool her. “Say I do have a . . . fetish.” Which I would be looking up online as soon as I was by myself. “It was Dmitri who got me so worked up. Maybe having other peoples’ eyes on me was the seasoning, but the main course was all him. He’s really dominant. I did those things because he told me to.”
“He sounds like a thrall.”
I slapped the gear shift. “Bingo. Everything about him—his voice, face, body, scent, intensity—makes me lose my ever-loving mind. In the same situation with another guy, I wouldn’t have reacted as I did. I felt completely out of control.”
“I understand why that would be so scary. Especially for your first time.”
I exhaled. “I trusted him to take care of me when I was drunk, and instead he pushed me to do things I wouldn’t ordinarily do.”
“Maybe he sensed your fetish. What if he was trying to please you?”
He’d told me, I need to give you pleasure so much I ache. I cleared my throat. “Then I would say I might have possibly overreacted and blamed him unfairly.” The look in his eyes . . . I’d hurt him. That damn sense of protectiveness rose up yet again.
“What if you ended up with him outside of a con?”
Of all the women he could have, Sevastyan was pursuing me. At least for now. “He lives on a different continent. And we have nothing in common.” I refused to believe I could fall for Sevastyan, with his sinful voice and talented fingers. With his lifeline glances, the ones that both lured me closer and scared the hell out of me. “Plus, I could never trust him. I don’t think another man will ever convince me I’d be enough for him. It’s like in the movies, when the lead guy makes a grand gesture, sacrificing everything to prove his love. Stupid, huh?”
“Not stupid at all,” Karin said.
“Catching Brett made me doubt myself in a way I never did before.” Wasn’t I desirable enough for him? Wasn’t I enough woman? “Besides, if I were ever going to settle down, it’d be with another grifter. Which means a tech billionaire is out of the running.”